Yosemite Valley

Tunnel view of Yosemite Valley

Upper Falls of Yosemite Falls

12 years and 2 weeks (to the same day of the week - Tuesday), Donna, Donna's niece Katie, Donna's nephew Doug, and I arrived at Yosemite Valley in a Cruise America rental RV with reservations for a campsite in Upper Pines Campground.  Katie and Doug are grown. Donna and I are back reminiscing.  In 1999 I described the water falls as "angry".  The Merced River ran swift.  Highway 120/140 was washed out.  The sky was so clear and blue that we called it "Yosemite Blue"; a color we have compared every sky to ever since.

Looking SW down Yosemite Valley

Today it's cloudy.  The Merced is higher.  The water falls are almost sprays as significantly more snow melt comes running off.  In fact, there's numerous snow melt cascades all along the cliffs.  So much so that it reminds me of our 2008 trip up Tracey Fjord to Sawyer Glacier (Alaska). The roads are intact.  If you're an American in Yosemite today, you're in the minority.  The dollar is so cheap the

Snow melt above The Ahwahnee Hotel

rest of the world is here on its vacation.  There's so many automobiles and rental RVs in the Valley with California plates that I'm sure there are no more rental vehicles in Los Angeles & San Francisco. It's so crowded that it takes 15 to 20 minutes to get through a 4-Way Stop.  So we're taking the advice of the Park Sierra staff and only visiting the Valley mid-week. We'll be back next week with the bicycles.

It's just good to be here, again.  Later, David

Park of the Sierras, Coarsegold, CA

Arriving Park of the Sierra, Coarsegold, CA

We are here!  We're as close as we can get to Yosemite Natl Park and fit in a campground.   Elevation is about 1,800 ft.  And we have the traditional Yosemite blue sky.

Lots planned for the coming month before moving on to Napa Valley and meeting up with part of Donna's family.  On the list is new front tires for the truck, remove the air bags from the truck's rear suspension, give the Verizon 4510L Mifi back to Verizon and see if an AT&T unit will work better (current using the droid as an internet connection), buy a new tire pressure monitoring system for the trailer, get the new bikes their two month service check,  bike Yosemite Valley, catch a couple of new movies, whatever else Donna can think of.  More later. David

Bakersfield, CA

We've had a great visit with Wayne and Debbie Naves while here in Bakersfield plus we got our a dog fix with Roxie.  If you've read all the blogs, you may recall that Wayne is the owner of the NuWa Owner's forum that I rely on for a significant amount of my RV info. We first met Wayne and Debbie while at West Yellowstone in June 2009.  Wayne was part of the group instrumental in setting up that RV get-together.  Wayne is also a civil servant for the Navy and supports the navy reserves.  He's my kinda guy with those kind of credentials!  They both work full time & took a weekend out of their very busy schedule to meet us here in Bakersfield.  Otherwise, Bakersfield is just a stop on the way to the SKP park in Coarsegold, CA.  A pretty darn nice stop, too.  We're in the Bakersfield RV Resort and it's a class place to put the RV.  You can read more about the park at http://bakersfieldrvresort.com.

Bakersfield, apparently, has grown significantly since Donna's mother lived in this area.  I'm told that oil and agriculture drive the economy in this area.  All I know is that we're within walking distance of a Camping World...and the charges on the credit card have jumped, accordingly.  Temps here are in the mid to high 90s during the day and high 60s for the lows at night.  If you can find shade, it's actually comfortable enough to sit outside.  No rain, of course.

If all goes well, we move on to Coarsegold in the morning.  We're there for about four weeks before visiting with some of Donna's relatives in Napa Valley in late July.  We're excited about Coarsegold since it's about a two hour drive to Yosemite Valley from the RV park.  May not be all that excited after we get there, but for now it's Yosemite as far as we're concerned!  Later, David

Radiator Springs??

Today we traveled south out of Monument Valley to Williams, AZ.  Most of the scenery reminds me of the backgrounds drawn in the 'Fred Flintstone' cartoons.   Then we got to Williams, AZ, and boy does it remind us of Radiator Springs in the movie 'Cars'.  Even though yesterday brought the steepest incline we've ever climbed on a single hill with this much weight in tow,

today was also a climb from about 5,000 ft in elevation to 7,000 ft in elevation.  Just not as steep of an incline on any individual hill.  It's also getting warmer for us.  Today it's in the 80s and lows in the high 60s.  Tomorrow, we plan to travel to Needles, CA and those temps are around 110 degrees. Verizon 4G continues to amaze me. 

Mt. Humphreys - Highest point in Arizona

We're currently in a 3G Verizon network area.  The MiFi connection is comparable to a normal WiFi connection at any RV park - usable, but...

We have GPS here in Williams, AZ.  We have WiFi at the RV park, and we have 3G network coverage (4 bar signal strength).  Our smart phone is set to pick up all three signals to find our location and provide local weather and Latitude location services. So where do you think the smart phone thinks we're at?  Keene, TX.  I guess that's closer to Arizona than Richmond, VA. 

Enough complaining.  Time to go clean the bugs off the truck and the front of the trailer and work on my sun tan.  Later, David

Main Street USA - Route 66 in Williams, AZ

Monument Valley, UT

View from our camp site.

 We're staying in Monument Valley, UT at the Goulding's complex. Here's some photos of our trip in today.  We approached the area from Cortez, CO  heading southwest generally following US 160 and US 163.   And, yes, John Wayne slept here.

BTW: There was lots of new snow on the Colorado mountains this morning!

 

Sites a little tight.  We trimmed a tree to get the bedroom slide out.

Don't let the picture fool you.  We're covered in red dirt!

D&SNG Railroad

Silverton, CO

Not our train; late train departure - just like VRE

Parlor Car

Such a small blog; so many pictures.  Donna & I had a 100 pictures by the time we got to Silverton, CO.  This is a bucket list, gotta do, save your pennies, etc, trip.

(for the train buffs) The engines are K-36s with eight drive wheels and two steer wheels. We used 6 tons of coal round trip.  4.5 tons going up; 1.5 tons on the return.




We rode in the parlor car.  The gentleman on the right is Paul and he is from Australia.

Leaving Durango

The climb out of Durango

The views are fantastic.  At times you just had to stop the camera and look.  Other times it was point the camera out the window and hope.  







The climb is from about 6,500 ft to 9,100 ft.  The temp dropped 17 degrees.

Muddy water due to the snow melt.  They say it gets clearer later in the summer.

More pictures below for your enjoyment.  I'll get all of them up on facebook later today.  David



 

Arriving Silverton, CO

Durango, CO

This place thrives on white water sports.

We've had a great three days in and around Durango.  Tuesday we just drove around the area to get a feel for the place.  Wednesday we walked a portion of Durango's Animas River Trail, visited the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum, and downtown Durango. 

View from downtown Durango

The Animas River Trail is a well-used, seven mile walking/biking trail (mostly paved) along the river. 

D&SNG Railroad Museum

The Bar D Wranglers (Bar D Chuck Wagon Dinner)

Downtown Durango is very tourist friendly, but not for parking!  Lots of shopping and water or off-road adventures to entice you.









Like any railroad museum, the D&SNG Railroad Museum will keep any train or steam engine buff busy. Of course there's a model railroad layout to keep all us kids busy.






We took advantage of the great weather and went to a Chuck Wagon dinner/show.  I've read about these things, but didn't realize there were several in the western part of the US.  If you get a chance to do so, go to one.  We got there early and could hear folks talking about how great the show is.  We were very impressed.  We'd go back for the show, again, too.



Today we decided to bike the complete length of Animas River Trail.  It was a good bike ride as most of the trail is relatively level and any inclines aren't that steep.  It's also just nice to bike along side a rushing river.

Tomorrow we ride the Durango-Silverton train.

Santa Fe, NM to Bayfield, CO

On US 84 a few miles south of Pagosa Springs, CO

Travel day today.  We took the scenic route, US 84, from Santa Fe to Pagosa Springs, CO (and crossing the continental divide).  From there we travel west along US 160 to Bayfield, CO.  We're now in the Pine Riverside RV Park just west of Bayfield.  We're looking forward to sightseeing for the next week to include a chuck wagon cookout and a ride on the Durango to Silverton train.  Here's some sights we saw along the way, today.

Leaving Santa Fe, a lot of the land looked similar to Badlands Natl Park.  This picture and the next one are just north of Santa Fe (and the casinos) on US 84.

What I started doing was holding the phone up as we would crest a hill.  As soon as we topped the hill, I'd snap a shot.  Once we got settled in at the campground and could get the pictures up on a computer so I could get a good look at what we got, I culled out the best ones.  Got a lot of pictures of the truck's antenna, hood, and our trailer tire pressure monitor.  But every once in a while, a good one came up.  

Chimney Rock - just west of Pagosa Springs, CO

Photos are great, but it's the friends that make everything worth while.  I got an email from Ivan who talked about what we were doing and getting us up to date on the happenings back east.  In one thought, Ivan was talking about how his son was taking to water and they were anticipating a lot of time at the pool this summer.  As I was reading that email, we passed a sign that stated, "Come on in.  The water is fine!"  What made the sign interesting was that it had a guy standing in the river fly fishing.  You see, Ivan loves fly fishing.  Donna checked the water, Ivan.  She said it was fine.  Come on in!

Later David

Hyde Memorial State Park

Hyde Memorial State Park is an old state park just north of Santa Fe, NM and sits next to Santa Fe National Forest.  It's know for winter skiing, but it's also a nice change of pace from the dusty Santa Fe surroundings.

 The state park has a campground with some spaces for RVs.  These sites have electric only (30 amp) and appear large enough to hold a 35-37 ft motor home.  Some sites are reserveable, but most aren't.

One of the big pulls of the state park is it's circle trail.  It's a killer.  You start at 8,400 ft and climb 1,000 ft in 2 to 2.5 miles in one direction.  And that's the least incline of the trail!  Total trail length is 3.25 miles and it was at least a mile back to the truck.

 Didn't see a lot of wildlife until we started back down the road to the truck.  We saw deer cross in front of us.  They're much more skittish than the deer in Shenandoah.  They prance.  They look just like the highway warning signs.  And were way too quick for us to get pictures.  And like the white-tailed deer of Shenandoah, they travel in threes.

Only wildlife that would pose for us.

Our issue with the bedroom slide is resolved.  An air bubble got into the hydraulic ram for that slide and caused it to have some slack.  Turns out the solenoid for that slide wasn't closing all the way, either.  While we didn't find any hydraulic leaks, a couple of hydraulic lines were loose and got tighten during all this.

Next stop is Durango, CO.  The plan is to leave Santa Fe Monday and travel to a campground in Bayfield, CO (just east of Durango).  We'll see what the train schedule and availability to Silverton looks like and try to get a ride on it before we leave Colorado.  We're skipping Zion Natl Park and plan to head on over to California the following week to meet with Wayne and Debbie.

Ta ta for now. David
 

Landscaping at Santa Fe Skies RV Park

Santa Fe Sunset

The cloud in the upper left corner is smoke from the Arizona wild fires

We're getting a lot of smoke form the Arizona wild fires that's making some beautiful sunsets here in Santa Fe.  Here's Donna's handiwork.

 Our issue with the bedroom slide is resolved.  We're told it's an air bubble in the hydraulic lines and following the procedures (given to us by the Lake Havasu City, AZ dealer) worked to realign the slide.  We've got an RV tech coming by tomorrow morning to help us check for any hydraulic leaks and that the solenoids are fully closing as we're trying to find out what caused the slide to come out of alignment.

This little adventure caused us to sit in Santa Fe a little longer than planned.  Not bad as it's cooler here than the east coast (cool enough to run the furnace a little to ensure it's working).  We've decided to fore-go Zion Natl Park and spend a full week in/around Durango, CO before heading to California to meet up with Wayne & Debbie and Donna's family.

Later, David